Kenya prostitutes offers the hope for a cure for AIDS!
- Thread starter Xen
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MikeLynch
Just a Baker Street Muse
Huh...
Hope they don't get dissected.
Hope they don't get dissected.
Kinniken
Riding with William
Have you read the article or is this just a random attack on prostitutes?
It would be highly ironical though if the breakthrough in the vacine for a disease initially portrayed as a "sinner's disease" affecting prostitute, gays and drug users came from studying African prostitutes
It sounds too good to be true, though. I'll expect this to be a false hope until they have serious results - hopes of a cure or vacine for AIDS have been dashed too often for me to be very hopeful
SeleucusNicator
Diadoch
We've found many people that are immune or resistant to AIDs. The percentage is as high as 10% in some Scandinavian populations.
Desmond Hawkins
Deity
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Sounds like someone is just looking for a fight, where there is none. The fact that the prostitutes don't have HIV is what is so major here.
croxis
Chat room op
IS it that they don't have hiv or they don't have aids? There is a VERY important difference there.
Pontiuth Pilate
Republican Jesus!
I seem to remember someone made a similar breakthrough studying milkmaids
Siegmund
King
I am not surprised.
I've thought for years that a cure or vaccine for HIV -- even a better understanding of how it works --- was a lot more likely to come from observing natural resistance to it and deducing how it works than from experiments with drug cocktails.
I am a little surprised it has been so long in coming ... but given the infection rates in Africa today, in just a few years we're going to see trends like this ever more clearly, as the resistant "stand out" more and more against the background of so many dying.
What I want to know, is why a search for people with a natural resistance to the virus was not a higher priority in the earlier days of AIDS research. This should have been found ten years ago, if people had been looking the right places.
I've thought for years that a cure or vaccine for HIV -- even a better understanding of how it works --- was a lot more likely to come from observing natural resistance to it and deducing how it works than from experiments with drug cocktails.
I am a little surprised it has been so long in coming ... but given the infection rates in Africa today, in just a few years we're going to see trends like this ever more clearly, as the resistant "stand out" more and more against the background of so many dying.
What I want to know, is why a search for people with a natural resistance to the virus was not a higher priority in the earlier days of AIDS research. This should have been found ten years ago, if people had been looking the right places.
KingBishop
Chieftain
I have never really heard of HIV negative before. Very interesting...
HannibalBarka
We are Free
If they can find a vaccine, then every will be able to go "whoring around" safely. At least I will
you fail to know anything about viral diseases in general and AIDS in particular! hope you get slapped on the wrist by the mods for this flame/troll!
get a textbook on viral diseases and read up, then you will see why these women most probably are a good bet for a vaccacine!
Zwelgje
Deity
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Indeed this is old news Stalin. This was BIG news also about a year ago. It turned out that a few prostitutes were resistant to the virus. Nothing special really, there are always certain percentages in the population that are resistant to a virus.
Further on it's not a big step in the direction of a vaccine to HIV, as said in the article the women don't produce antibodies but they have CTLs primed for HIV. So in order to make somebody resistant to HIV you have to take out CTLs, prime them for HIV and then put them back. Very costly...
So, while this is an interesting finding I really doubt whether this will help the general public at all. It merely sounds like a cry for attention from the Kenya's AIDS Control Program to get more money.
Science revolves about getting lots of attention for your research and getting people interested in order to get more money.
Further on it's not a big step in the direction of a vaccine to HIV, as said in the article the women don't produce antibodies but they have CTLs primed for HIV. So in order to make somebody resistant to HIV you have to take out CTLs, prime them for HIV and then put them back. Very costly...
So, while this is an interesting finding I really doubt whether this will help the general public at all. It merely sounds like a cry for attention from the Kenya's AIDS Control Program to get more money.
Science revolves about getting lots of attention for your research and getting people interested in order to get more money.
Pirate
Emperor
Why do you think they haven't been doing this for years? You think drug coctails are random mixes of medicines? The problem is that it has taken this long for patterns of resistance/immunity to emerge. The discovery that some resistance was due to a defect in one or both of the receptors that HIV uses to attack cells led to a whole new line of treatments that block those receptors in normal people. It's not like scientists sat around on that discovery.
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